Makayla Proffit
Professor Fogleman
EDC 102H
15 September 2009 My School Experience
There are many different types of schools in the US; private or public, high performing or low performing, and anywhere in between. Unfortunately, the experiences I’ve had in school haven’t been that great. I’ve learned that my high school is considered one of the lowest performing in Rhode Island, and one year was even in danger of losing its accreditation. Thankfully, I was in the honors program in my high school so my classes weren’t as terrible as they could have been. However, I do still have a number of bad experiences because of teachers not being as good of teachers as they could have been.
My first bad experience was my freshman year of high school, in my first class of the day actually. I had a Biology class, and the teacher was new and it was her first time teaching a class. Upon first meeting her, we all thought she was a student in the class because of the way she acted and dressed. She brought us to this small storage room, the entire class to go get books and ended up accidentally locking us in the room. We had to wait for someone to let us out because she broke the lock on the door handle, and it made the whole class about 20 minutes late to the next class. Later on in the year she even asked us a question on a test that was “What is my dog’s name?” Now, this would be ok as a bonus question, but this was a 5 question test and it was an actual question that counted. One more bad experience I’ve had with teachers at that school was actually my senior year, in my AP Calculus class. The teacher just couldn’t teach, for lack of a better description. He mumbled and was unclear about everything and everyone in that class got 1’s and 2’s on the AP exam because he didn’t cover any of the material we were supposed to learn. This was supposed to be the highest level math class offered at this high school, and a college level class, and it did not come close to anything like that.
These experiences at the time made me feel nervous and anxious about any higher level class and college, because I felt very unprepared for it. I was also very frustrated with the situation because there was no way out of it. Now, I feel more confident about my classes in college, but I still resent those teachers for not preparing any of us for what we would have to face. I’ve learned from these experiences that not everyone gets an equal education, and we as a society should have more ways of making sure teachers in public schools and even private schools are up to par. No one should be responsible for the education of others when they either don’t care about what they’re doing or they’re just incapable of doing it.
Long term, none of these experiences have affected me in bad ways, except for the Calculus class because I couldn’t get college credit for it and I couldn’t even re-take a Calculus class here. I have to take a pre-Calculus class, which would be fine except we’re currently learning things that are basic algebra that I learned in 8th grade. But besides that, if anything these experiences have made me realize how important a good education is, and low performing schools should have policies of some sort put into effect so kids can get a better education and be more prepared for any form of higher education.
Professor Fogleman
EDC 102H
15 September 2009
My School Experience
There are many different types of schools in the US; private or public, high performing or low performing, and anywhere in between. Unfortunately, the experiences I’ve had in school haven’t been that great. I’ve learned that my high school is considered one of the lowest performing in Rhode Island, and one year was even in danger of losing its accreditation. Thankfully, I was in the honors program in my high school so my classes weren’t as terrible as they could have been. However, I do still have a number of bad experiences because of teachers not being as good of teachers as they could have been.
My first bad experience was my freshman year of high school, in my first class of the day actually. I had a Biology class, and the teacher was new and it was her first time teaching a class. Upon first meeting her, we all thought she was a student in the class because of the way she acted and dressed. She brought us to this small storage room, the entire class to go get books and ended up accidentally locking us in the room. We had to wait for someone to let us out because she broke the lock on the door handle, and it made the whole class about 20 minutes late to the next class. Later on in the year she even asked us a question on a test that was “What is my dog’s name?” Now, this would be ok as a bonus question, but this was a 5 question test and it was an actual question that counted. One more bad experience I’ve had with teachers at that school was actually my senior year, in my AP Calculus class. The teacher just couldn’t teach, for lack of a better description. He mumbled and was unclear about everything and everyone in that class got 1’s and 2’s on the AP exam because he didn’t cover any of the material we were supposed to learn. This was supposed to be the highest level math class offered at this high school, and a college level class, and it did not come close to anything like that.
These experiences at the time made me feel nervous and anxious about any higher level class and college, because I felt very unprepared for it. I was also very frustrated with the situation because there was no way out of it. Now, I feel more confident about my classes in college, but I still resent those teachers for not preparing any of us for what we would have to face. I’ve learned from these experiences that not everyone gets an equal education, and we as a society should have more ways of making sure teachers in public schools and even private schools are up to par. No one should be responsible for the education of others when they either don’t care about what they’re doing or they’re just incapable of doing it.
Long term, none of these experiences have affected me in bad ways, except for the Calculus class because I couldn’t get college credit for it and I couldn’t even re-take a Calculus class here. I have to take a pre-Calculus class, which would be fine except we’re currently learning things that are basic algebra that I learned in 8th grade. But besides that, if anything these experiences have made me realize how important a good education is, and low performing schools should have policies of some sort put into effect so kids can get a better education and be more prepared for any form of higher education.